YALP!

[gnomi]

[Poll #976181]

Comments

[cbpotts.livejournal.com]

I protest.

I am starting a one-woman campaign to have Northern NY declared part of New England.

[angwantibo.livejournal.com]

This one would be better with check boxes instead of radio buttons. I will use gyro, hero, sub or grinder depending on who I'm with. They're all natural for me.

Similarly, I will say frappe in New England and milkshake elsewhere.

[angwantibo.livejournal.com]

We'll take you after you join Red Sox Nation.

[farwing.livejournal.com]

Er...I confess that sometimes I call it a milkshake even though I know it's more Earth-authentic* regionally acceptable to call it a frappe. Sort of like how I still think calling a sandwich shop a spa is faintly ridiculous but also wonderful. It sounds so relaxing... Everything is called a spa in this part of Cambridge, and yet we are all so tense...*is profound*



*catch the reference!

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

I kinda use sub and hero interchangeably, but for the most part, the true sub is cold and made of layers of meat (and/or cheese)with lettuce, tomatoes, onions and various other condiments on top, whereas the true hero is hot and contains things like meatballs or something parmigiana in sauce. However, as I said, both are correct.

However, when in certain parts of NJ, "hoagie" is an acceptable term. I myself used to frequent establishments with "Hoagie" in the title. However, I bought subs and/or heroes from them.

[angwantibo.livejournal.com]

Isn't hero just a mispronounced gyro, anyway?

[kuroshii.livejournal.com]

ahem.

a "gyro" is specifically a sandwich of sliced "spiced lamb stuff on a spit" on pita, usually with cucumber sauce and perhaps lettuce/onion/tomato/etc.

anyone caught using "gyro" to mean any other kind of sandwich gets 50 lashes with a wet (pasta) noodle!

/ahem.

(not mad at you miz poll-writer. just being pre-emptive on any poll-takers)

[eroticjames.livejournal.com]

I ate Tortas... but that's very border. They called them Subs in the cafateria tho.

[seborn.livejournal.com]

Seconded. "Philly cheese-steak" would not be a weirder option than "Gyro" in this poll.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

I was gonna say. I've always thought "gyro" was something entirely else, not involving a "long roll". [singing]"One of these things is not like the others ..."[/singing]

[elaine-brennan.livejournal.com]

I was tempted by "cabinet" -- but it's been much too long since I both lived in Rhode Island and was drinking such concoctions. But interestingly enough, Marc and I were talking about these various terms just last night.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

Here I go, skewing your poll. When and where I was a kid, they were poboys (with none of your fancypants apostrophes, so far as I recall, just maybe a hyphen), but I wouldn't dream of using that term when and were I am now, even in my head. Of course, I was more interested in losing my native regionalisms than in preserving them.

That said, I'd recognize any of the listed terms as meaning the same thing ... except for gyro, which as far as I know doesn't belong in the same class any more than muffaletta does. Ohhhh, Central Grocery muffalettas .... ::pines::

Anyway. Similarly, I'll say frappe or cabinet only if it's specifically called that on the shop's menu board; both terms seem unnecessarily obstinate.

[tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com]

it's a po'boy if it's filled with fried crustaceans (ideally rock shrimp or crawfish), otherwise it's a sub. *makes submarine noises*

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Growing up in NYC, I saw all those terms in shop windows. And I never ordered any of them. So my answer to #1 is "None of the above and all of the above."

Not having developed a taste for the item described in #2 until moving to Boston and living across the street from Tosci's --- in the good old days when everyone knew that they were basically kosher, and before they started selling pork buns :-( --- I call them "frappes" even when I'm in "milkshake" country. Confuses people, lemme tell you, but it beats getting milk+syrup without ice cream!

[cbpotts.livejournal.com]

Dude, I like all them football teams. Sign me up.

(Clueless sports girl will claim allegience to whoever is convenient)

[angwantibo.livejournal.com]

Go Anteaters!

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Not at all. A gyro (or, if you're in Sydney, "yeero"), is Greek/Turkish, and is essentially a shawarma with yoghurt sauce instead of techina. The kind of bread it comes in is irrelevant, and indeed it's more commonly in a pita or laffa than in a baguette. It's called gyro because of the way the stack of meat goes round and round on its vertical spit.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Where I come from it's just a sandwich in a sausage roll. Or at least it was; now that Subway™ has arrived, it's probably become a "sub", and people probably have no idea why it's called that, never having heard of "submarine sandwiches".

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

a *name of contents* baguette? ;p (sub is probably the easiest to translate thanks to the arrival of Subway TM in the UK)

I thought a gyro was more-or-less a kebab?

[kuroshii.livejournal.com]

yes! in turkish it's actually a "doner-kebab," and in the UK they call them "DOH-ners" (popular instead of burgers after hitting the pubs) like we in the states call them "JEE-rohs." ;)

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

"Hero" was my first response for #1, but "sub" works too...

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

I'm from Western Mass, where the language, it is different than the eastern half of the state.

[arfur]

I'd say it varies more by the mile than the half-state. The selection choices were far too broad. :-)

[angwantibo.livejournal.com]

I know that they're different. I was once told that with the number of Greek restaurant owners in the Northeast and the fact that they call any sandwich (though usually w/ pita) a gyro (w/ a gutteral h similar to a Spanish jota or Hebrew chet) the hero was born.

Online sources back this up (see http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=grinder&searchmode=none).

[epj.livejournal.com]

Cabinet? I'd heard the rest of these, but that was a completely new one to me.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

According to this source, possibly unreliable, gyros weren't introduced into the USA until the late 1960s, and were first introduced in Chicago. I think the "hero sandwich" in NY dates to much earlier than that.

[violetcheetah.livejournal.com]

ditto on the frappe/milkshake thing. though, if i make one myself, i call it a milkshake, but i like to make mine kinda runny.

[jencallisto]

Maybe I've just lived in too many places, but I desperately wanted checkboxes. I ended up going with sub and milkshake, but I would be happy to use hoagie, grinder, and frappe, and comfortable with hero. Po'boy makes me think of something more specific, but my thoughts on that are very vague so it doesn't actually bother me, while I've never heard of cabinet, and using gyro like that seems actively strange to me, as a gyro has specificed components and a usual form factor that is not what you describe.

[half-double.livejournal.com]

Gah! Your poll has thwarted me. A sub is cold. A grinder is hot (as in "made to be hot," not Subway's wimpy "let us briefly warm your meat and bread to make ourselves look more upscale"). A poboy, I believe, requires seafood. A gyro is its own kind of beast altogether.

Similarly, a milkshake is a wonderful thing that can be found at any diner worth its salt. A "frappe" (ugh) is a pretentious thing suitable only for yuppies.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

A "frappe" (ugh) is a pretentious thing suitable only for yuppies.

Unless you live in Massachusetts, where a "milkshake" is milk with flavoring and no ice cream. To get ice cream, you ask for a frappe.